A couple members of the NOVA staff ran an RTT on Feb 2nd at Huzzah Hobbies in Ashburn, VA - basically a live-fire test of the new NOVA Open missions. Huzzah is definitely a tabletop-focused store with a great selection, and did a wonderful job supporting the RTT - with plans to expand its playing space substantially in the coming months. Definitely worth checking out if you're in the area.
This year's NOVA Open missions are very different from last year's - you will definitely want to playtest these to tune your lists. The biggest change is the scoring approach, while the additions of the relic mission, mysterious objectives, and player-placed objectives definitely up the challenge level, and require an additional skill area to consider for player growth. The only real negative I thought was Hammer and Anvil deployment in a big tournament environment: with tables end-to-end it is a massive pain in the ass and big game delay to run around to the opponent's side of the table to manage complex movement or assault - especially with the large units common to 6th. I'd originally planned to put all 3 batreps here, but that took too long so here's the first one:
